Overview

Dismissed as a flimsy front for management interests, industrial unions nonetheless carved out a role in the Carnegie Steel Company empire and then at U.S. Steel. James D. Rose examines the pivotal role played by these company-sponsored employee representation plans (ERPs) at the legendary steel works in Duquesne, Pennsylvania.  As Rose reveals, ERPs matured from tools of the company into worker-led organizations that represented the interests of the mills' skilled tradesmen and workers. ERPs and management created a sophisticated bargaining structure. Meanwhile, the independent trade union gave way to the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC), a professionalized organization that expended huge resources on companywide unionization. Yet even when the SWOC secured a collective bargaining agreement in 1937, it failed to sign up a majority of the Duquesne workforce.  Sophisticated and persuasive, Duquesne and the Rise of Steel Unionism confirms that what people did on the shop floor played a critical role in the course of steel unionism.

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Traces the influence of the employee committees and the rise of steel unionism at U.S. Steel's Duquesne works... Rose ... offers a detailed, comprehensive account of the relation between ERPs and the Steel Workers' Organizing Committee and explores the shop floor effects of the ERPs. Clearly written and thoroughly researched, this study makes a valuable contribution to an important period in industrial relations. -- Choice An excellent book. Rose provides ample evidence for his arguments, and he challenges our conceptions of how industrial unionism took root in the United States. This book should be must reading for labor historians and industrial relations scholars. -- James R. Zetka, Jr., Journal of American History Rose's study significantly expands our understanding of big steel and the rise of steel unionism in this country... Rose's access to U.S. Steel's records ... gives his account of the evolution of unionism in the steel industry a unique perspective... His grasp of the historiography and nuances of the steel industry and unionism is both broad and deep. -- Marilyn D. Rhinehart, American Historical Review Original and thought-provoking in its perspective, and clearly written. -- Kenneth Warren, Business History Rose delivers a well-crafted and detailed story which raises questions about working-class militancy and class consciousness in the decade many historians see as a high point of working-class mobilization and unity. And, he suggests, the Steelworkers Union adopted a highly-centralized and top-down organizational model not because union bureaucrats betrayed rank-and-file aspirations ... but because workers were less united and less militant than supposed and because only a centralized and bureaucratic union could actually succeed... Well worth reading. -- Richard Oestreicher, Pennsylvania Magazine of History An excellent reference for serious students wanting specifics on the steel industry. -- Tom Hull, Tech Directions ADVANCE PRAISE This excellent work has far-reaching implications not only for historians but also for labor activists. Rose provides a very persuasive analysis of the dynamics of union organizing in the steel industry, as well as important lessons in 'how it was done.' No other scholar has developed with such clarity the argument that in-plant organizing produced not one movement but two. -- David Montgomery, author of The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865-1925 The thoroughness of Rose's research and the breadth and depth of his knowledge are truly impressive. At a time when many labor historians have chosen to focus mainly on issues of ethnicity, gender, and race, Rose's unapologetic concentration on the shop floor and the inner history of unionism at the Duquesne Works offers a neglected--but instructive and richly textured--angle of vision. Bruce Nelson, author of Divided We Stand: American Workers and the Struggle for Black Equality

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